Book Review:

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry, is a fun murder mystery set in Victorian England. Seven girls attend a finishing school and in one night, their headmistress and her brother die suddenly and mysteriously. The clever group of girls decides to cover up their deaths to enjoy the freedom of living on their own. My daughter doesn’t like books that involve death (which we seem to read a lot of!), so she was a little weary as we started this book. But the book is lighthearted and fun, so she ended up loving it.

Discussion Questions:

Instead of discussing the book this time, we had the special treat of a question and answer session with the author! I took a workshop from Julie Berry in June, and she agreed to Facetime with the girls during our book group. It was such a cool experience. The girls asked her all sorts of questions about why she included certain things in the book, about the writing and revision process, how she did her research for the book, etc. Julie was wonderful and so great with the girls. It was awesome.

Here are some discussion questions:

1. Which girl did you like the best? Who did you like the least? Which character are you most similar to?

2. What do you think it would be like to go to a finishing school?

3. Would you have agreed with Kitty and thought it was a good idea to cover up the two deaths?

4. What was your favorite part of the book? Your least favorite part?

5. Did you figure out who the murderer was? If not, who did you think it was?

6. What did you think about the names for the girls? Did you like that they all had a label?

7. Did you figure out who Julius was?

8. Did you like the ending?

9. Would you like to live on your own, without adults?

Food Ideas:

We had a strawberry social of course! We drank pink lemonade, and enjoyed a giant bowl of strawberries with fruit dip, biscuits, and a bowl of chocolates.